


hurt me just enough (make me feel something)

by HomebodyNobody



Series: sincerity is scary [3]
Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Home, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Sad, Sex, Smut, Vaginal Sex, and then they didn't talk about it, dumbasses who can't communicate, literally so fucking sad you guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:46:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27694339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HomebodyNobody/pseuds/HomebodyNobody
Summary: For a moment, he lets himself burn. When the radio goes silent and Shoupe walks into the tent to deliver the news, his first response, his automatic reply, is that horrible, scorching, engrossing anger. The only thing he can hear is his own voice, torn and tearing, cracking and terrified, screaming accusations and fault in the face of a man who barely knows what he’s done.But then he sees Kiara.(JJ's perspective of the night the phantom went down; also, his perspective of 'touch me someone,' same events, different feels)
Relationships: JJ Maybank/Kiara Carrera, JJ/Kiara (Outer Banks), Kiara Carrera/JJ Maybank
Series: sincerity is scary [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1973728
Comments: 22
Kudos: 56





	hurt me just enough (make me feel something)

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah this is twice the length of its companion piece what of it
> 
> title from 'feel something' by Jaymes Young  
> (same song diff lyrics bc ~parallels~)

When the  _ Phantom _ goes down, JJ wants to explode. He wants to tear down walls and burn up buildings, feel bones crack under his bare hands and blood splatter across his skin. He wants to rip into something -- anything -- with his bare hands and feel ruin in his fingertips because that’s what he does best -- destroy. He doesn’t know anything else, not in a life like his, not with a father and a house and a childhood that haunts before it is dead, before it is even over. He only knows pain, and fire, and rubble, and blood. He is a boy filled with so much anguish and fear and loathing, and the only thing those forces do is tear and plunder, crack and shatter, bomb and terrorize and kill. JJ wants to become those things, those all-consuming methods of death, because this world has finally taken from him the last of his light, the last of his family, the last proof that he has ever been anything other than the storm that builds and rages under his skin. 

For a moment, he lets himself burn. When the radio goes silent and Shoupe walks into the tent to deliver the news, his first response, his automatic reply, is that horrible, scorching, engrossing anger. The only thing he can hear is his own voice, torn and tearing, cracking and terrified, screaming accusations and fault in the face of a man who barely knows what he’s done. 

But then he sees Kiara. 

She’s already sobbing, tears staining her skin, a mask of grief and hurt and defeat marring her perfect face, and she’s falling into her parents’ arms, and suddenly, impossibly, the rage simmers, and his blood cools. It might be the certainty of still having her, of knowing that there is still someone alive who holds his secrets and still believes him worthy. It might be the need to stay strong for her, stand where she crumbles, catch every blow of the furious sea across his back so that she needn’t bear it. It might be just her face, her eyes, the way her curls blow in the wind even as she breaks beside him. He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t ask himself. He only takes a breath and shuts the door against the flames. In an instant, he steps back up from hell. 

The Heywards are waiting for him. Of course they are. Pope’s family has always acted as a second one, peripheral, but standing, an open seat at the dinner table, a ready bed in the living room. Heyward doesn’t like him much -- JJ doesn’t blame him -- but where Luke Maybank gave up and Big John Routledge fought to the last, Martin Heyward takes the burden. He pulls JJ in with his wife and his son, and in this instant, makes him family. JJ breathes with them, in and out, knowing they cannot and will never understand what stirs in his chest and skims the surface underneath his skin. Only Maybanks know this temper, know this violence, and he is grateful, at least, that the Heywards don’t have to see it. He thanks his body for the containment of his lungs and bones and skin, thanks his practiced, damaged mind and the barely-glowing soul buried in the darkness there. He breathes, in and out, and holds down the beast that threatens to burst from him. 

He doesn’t remember the ride back from the marina. He thinks he might be dying, with the way the heavy, electric night air sticks to his body as it climbs in and out of his lungs, clawing at the inside of him and causing pain with no care and no temper, no mercy and no peace. JJ knows that when the car stops in the driveway and Yvonne leads a blank, empty Pope into the house, he stands in the dirt and looks at the home he’ll never have, his skeleton threatening to step out from his skin at the thought of going inside. 

“Son,” Heyward says, and reaches for him, one hand gesturing toward the front door. He is a kind man. Stout and sturdy, the picture of a father, of a protector, of everything that JJ has never had and will never be, no matter how much he tries or works against the nature clawing at his heart. 

“I’m not --” he starts, and his heartbeat stutters and stops, flips and stalls and runs and roars. JJ is not this man’s son. JJ is not Pope. “I can’t --” The words don’t make it all the way out into the night, falling short in clouds of disappointment and salted earth. The warm golden light above the doorway seems to call him a liar. He doesn’t belong here. “I’m sorry.” 

He runs. 

He runs until he tastes his own blood and even then he doesn’t stop. He can’t feel his legs and his stomach cries to empty itself and tears gather and fly into the rain as it pelts down and plasters his shirt to his skin and he runs and he runs and he runs. He’s dizzy and falling and moving forward all at once, any sound blending into the cacophonous noise of his own blood and heartbeat and breath. His legs give out and his knees hit rock and split and bleed. His body curls over itself, his hands working into dirt and clenching mud between his fists. His stomach heaves and his grief expels and he sobs and pounds the ground with futile rage and desperate begging. The night is not quiet or still or any of the things that he wishes night should be and he cannot control the monster any longer. 

The beast of his past and of his circumstance and of his father finally reigns in this shattered shell of a boy. 

JJ  _ screams. _

* * *

When the vomiting stops and the echoes of his grief have ceased vibrating in his bones, as the world starts to spin again and fall back into orbit, JJ stands, and realizes where he is. 

Home. 

Or where home is supposed to be. 

The house he grew up in sits in the darkness and glares down at him with broken teeth and the memory of faded bruises and wounds still bleeding but long since healed. The porch screen is still busted from where his father threw him through it only yesterday. Usually, JJ’s body aches with the memory of a fight, remembering each landed blow and every clash of skin. There is none of that tonight, every nerve already screaming with the pain of loss and grief and all the other things he’s put his body through. The screen door is caked with grime and years of neglect, and he knows it will screech hideously on its hinges when he pulls it open. He doesn’t think before he goes inside. 

Luke Maybank looks dead. He’s passed out on the couch, a bottle dangling from his fingers, his snores filling the dingy, cluttered room. There is no moonlight here, not behind the clouded windows or the dusty, broken blinds. There is only the bare bulb above the stove; the glass over it an early casualty in the everlasting battle between father and son. It had shattered one of the many times Luke had thrown his son into the cabinets. 5 stitches. JJ was 12. One of the many angry, raised, and nasty scars that tear across this house. He rubs at the back of his head in aching memory, an unconscious action. 

Tears streaming silently down his dripping, dirty face, JJ stands at the threshold, staring across the desperate wasteland of the main room. It's littered with bottles, a fine white dust coating the tables. The darkness swallows any memories JJ can recall with joy, unfamiliar in a nostalgic sort of way, a place he used to know. Kie would realize the ache between his heart and his lungs, comprehend the emptiness there while knowing how he overflows with pointless, resigned, childish need and burning anger and deep, rushing sadness. She always empathizes perfectly, even without words, maybe just her arm around him, her chin on his shoulder. Maybe just a flicker of deep, brown eyes. A statement of complete acceptance, solidarity. Understanding.

The thought of her shines in him, a glittering sliver of hope in the darkness, the north star on a black-velvet night. He loves her. Needs her, adores her, can’t live without her. Pining, desperate, hopelessly, foolishly, heart-wrenchingly, stereotypically ass-over-teakettle  _ in love _ . It’s stupid and illogical and dangerous and he knows all that, but he can’t help it, not when she smiles at him, not when she laughs at his jokes and takes his hand to step down off the dock, not when she dreams so broad and beautiful and optimistic. She’s sunlight and warmth and kindness and he watches and smiles and hopes she sees her own beauty reflected in his eyes.

It is the strength of her that moves him now, whether unknowingly borrowed, or given freely, or perhaps the strength she helped him grow, that has always belonged to him. He makes no effort to muffle himself as he wades through the junk and trash and heavy, dragging, chokingly familiar air. It feels like a winter sweater, itchy and old and too-tight but not enough to retire -- comfortable in a sick, destructive sort of way. A part of JJ wants the screaming fight, the thrown fists, his inevitable loss. He wants to feel something other than this crushing grief and unprecedented pain and hollow, churning, hungry guilt. He wants to  _ feel _ . 

His father will kill him, when he finds out about the  _ Phantom _ , the stolen keys, the colossal mistake that JJ has made. He thinks that tonight, right now -- he may not care. 

Luke doesn’t wake up. 

The first thing JJ does is shower, his wet clothes slapping against the tile floor, reverberating and grating in the small space. His shoulders tense from habit, rather than fear. He doesn’t rush, just stands under the scalding spray, his chest shaking, caving in on itself with dry, muffled sobs. He doesn’t know how long it’s been when he steps out, only that the rain has stopped. After all, the storm had just clipped Kildare, heading east and claiming two young lives, instead. Standing on the bath mat, dripping water and staring at his distorted reflection, he knows he can’t stay here, is already operating on borrowed time. If he’s caught here, he’s dead, no two ways about it, and he needs to get out now, because that’s starting to sound like a pretty good idea. 

JJ packs a bag, yanking the duffel leftover from his two-week stint on the soccer team down from his closet and packing it full of whatever clothes he can reach, not conscientious of their state of cleanliness or what particular articles they may be. None of his shit is worth anything, anyway. What comes with him, what stays -- it doesn’t really matter. He is sure to grab the photos of him and his friends off the walls, slipping them between the pages of a copy of  _ Ender’s Game _ , which he stole from the school at age thirteen. It was the only book for school he ever read (and probably the only book he’s ever finished), because Kiara read it, and she liked it, and he didn’t want to let her down. He’s always been good at that -- letting people down. 

He even grabs the picture of him and his mom, the last one, taken on his fifth birthday, just before she disappeared in a cloud of dust, leaving him barefoot in the driveway. The first day of kindergarten had been the next morning. He doesn’t look at the picture long before shoving it in the back of the book. Hesitating, his hand hovers over a picture from the Last Good Day, his fourteenth birthday, when Luke had given him the dirt bike. It had been one of his rare attempts at sobriety, a whole four days, and JJ spent all of them cautious and terrified, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waking up to the motorcycle outside the house had convinced him that maybe things were going to stay good, this time. But then one celebratory beer turned into four turned into twelve and a bump, and he still has a scar from the following night, sickle-shaped and stark-white, on his left palm. He’d thrown his hand up in defense from a broken bottle. Six stitches, that time. He leaves the photo on the wall. 

On his way out, he stops in the living room, loaded down with a backpack and the duffel, staring around at the ruin of his father, the inside of Luke’s tortured soul splashed across what used to be a cheerful, loving home. The monster inside of JJ, that screaming, feral beast, wants to swing his bag across the table, knock over all the empty bottles in one furious move, wake his father in a shower of glass and fear, like JJ has so many times. But he recognizes the sick urge rising in his chest as one that does not belong to him, but generations of men before him, men that gave in, that allowed the beast in their bellies to consume them, men that became the monster. JJ has already decided he is better than them, will be better than them. His strength walked into his math class in seventh grade with long, gawky legs and wild curls, and he’s held her in his heart, since. 

Every time he craves  _ real _ violence, the kind you can’t walk back from, he reminds himself that those thoughts -- they aren’t  _ him _ . They are his blood, his inheritance, cursed and unwanted, and he reminds himself of her face, of her smile, the way it would fall when she learned of whatever it is he is trying to stop himself from doing. He remembers her, and takes a deep breath, and the world begins to spin, again. 

And so, it is because of Kiara that Luke Maybank’s slumber goes uninterrupted, and JJ leaves his childhood home for the last time. 

The night, at least, is clear, cleansed by the heavy rain. He takes the shortcut through the trees, the path that knows his feet as they have grown and carried him into unfairly premature adulthood. It’s a fifteen-minute walk, barely that. As he walks, JJ remembers, the grief kicking open doors warped shut with salt spray and age. The first time he met John B, a brown, curly head popping over a pallet of two-by-fours, a missing tooth and a stray hacky sack. Roughhousing on the construction site that would become the Chateau, admonished by Big John and Uncle T to watch out for lost nails. His eighth birthday, the dusty old gameboy John B had wrapped in newspaper. (That was before he knew how to feel ashamed. His birthday gift from Luke had been a black eye.) The start of third grade the week after, both boys thrilled to be in the same class. 

Middle school, when John B was pretty and JJ was trash, a loudmouth to be put up with while the girls fawned over his best friend. Seventh grade, the entrance of Kiara Carrera and the burning, inconvenient place she slowly whittled in his heart. Eighth grade, saving Pope from bullies that had him cornered on the basketball court. Stealing beer from his dad and the formation of the Pogue Lyfe T-Shirt Company Board of Associates in the boathouse at the Chateau. Kiara’s rocky re-acceptance to said board after her kook year, made even more difficult by the recent disappearance of Big John. Loyalty and familiarity, trust, and yes, even love, built over years through slow, golden afternoons and unexpected vulnerability under the watchful guidance of the moon. 

When he reaches that little house in the reeds, fresh tears sting at JJ’s eyes. He knows this isn’t a permanent solution. He has to go back and face Heyward, apologize for ruining his son’s life, beg for charity and sympathy and all those other things that he inspires in people and is usually so quick to spurn. But for tonight, this will do. He goes around to the back, his hand hovering over the door handle. He knows what he’ll find. The place tossed. His home (because the Chateau has always been home, not the Maybank house) destroyed. He drops the duffel and his backpack on the porch and backs away, swallowing down the bitter fear that rises in his throat. The house seems to watch him when he turns and continues walking down to the hammock, his hands shoved in his pockets, eyes screwed tight against tears, feet knowing the path. 

He picks up an old solo cup that’s been blowing around on the grass and pulls out his phone. There’s no service, still, and he probably won’t have any for a while, not until he can get his own phone plan, since Luke will certainly stop paying for his. He has some music downloaded, old shit he hasn’t listened to in a long time. He scrolls through the songs, most of them from the summer before. They’re not his usual head-banging, heart-pumping punk music, instead acoustic folk, the stuff Kie listens to and he pretends to hate. It was that summer he finally realized that he was in love with her, and was likely going to be for a long, long time. Consequently, most of them are angsty as hell. Macabrely appropriate, he guesses. 

Memories flood through his mind as he scrolls, hazy, pleasant ones, all tinged and tinted blue with grief. Tears blur the words on the screen and he picks a song at random, dropping his phone in the cup to amplify the sound and setting it on one of the haphazard tables set up among the lawn chairs. Rifling around the boathouse, he finds an old Altoids tin and takes out one of the joints he stashed there. JJ’s like a packrat; he has shit hidden everywhere, most of which he completely forgets about until the opportune moment. There’s still a cooler sitting in the grass from earlier in the week, a few cans floating in the three inches of scummy water in the bottom. JJ doesn’t care, fishing one out and popping the top. It’s lukewarm and tastes like it’s been an aluminum can baking in the hot sun for three days. He chugs half of it in one go. 

Lighting the joint, he falls back into the hammock, laying in it sideways so his feet kick against the bare spot worn into the lawn. He takes a deep drag, holds it in his lungs until his chest burns and vision blurs before releasing it into the night. He waits at least one song before taking another hit, inhaling with the same palliative routine. He likes the way he can feel it sink into his blood, fog the sharp edges of his grief, turn everything hazy and take him out of the world. He paces himself, knows if he gets too high he’ll lose control, and, based on what he had to push down at his father’s house, that idea terrifies him. 

The first blunt is still idly burning as he opens his second beer, popping the top and taking a long sip. Dropping his head back, he watches the sky pitch back and forth above him, the bright stars leaving silvery trails across his vision, everything bitter and buzzing and numb. It could be five minutes or two hours before he hears the slap of sneakers against dirt and jerks immediately wide awake, his mind racing. Maybe John B survived. Maybe he got back to shore and he came here because he didn’t know what else to do and -- 

Kiara rounds the corner and steps into the silver light, her chest heaving, her hair wispy and lifted in the gentle breeze. His heart, which normally flips over in his chest at the sight of her, sinks through his gut. “Hey,” she says, and it’s breathless, and she’s beautiful. “I thought you were…” and he understands, knows the disappointment crashing inside her, a shattered-stained-glass kind of grief, the tragedy that comes from years of crafting an attempt at perfection, a lifetime creating beauty, shattered in an instant. It’s the same kind of disaster happening in him. 

He knows who she was expecting, who she was hoping to find, maybe soaking wet and exhausted, but alive. John B is someone special, someone people follow because all he has to do is ask, some charming, inspirational figure that might go down in history for being a famous, ridiculously handsome treasure hunter. JJ is a drunkard’s son with no talents, no aptitudes, no future. He’s made of half-learned lessons from hard falls and crushing mistakes, doing the same shit over and over again with different intentions and hoping it’ll get him somewhere else. “I’m not,” he says. Because he isn’t.

She studies him, her brown eyes quiet and inscrutable, her hands floating at her sides like she can’t decide what to do with them, or maybe just forgot they were there. She has this face, when she’s reaching inside him and about to tell him everything he’s feeling, about to put words to the forces swirling in his stomach. Her eyes get shrewd and sharp and he can see the gears turning in her head, watch her mull through everything and pick out the things she wants to say to him. He loves to see her like this, intelligent and beautiful, and his anger pauses in its steady pulse, the grief leaking through in the stillness she inspires. 

“I noticed,” she says, dropping her bag, and then she’s moving toward him and he’s leaning out of the way so she can sit down, because it’s that easy, still, even in this hellscape of silence and pain, he still knows her, still hands her the joint without thinking. They fall back, eyes to the stars, shoulders pressed together, and JJ thinks of his mother, the way she used to hold his hand in hers and trace it across the sky, telling him stories of the heroes that lived there. She was the last person that loved him, he thinks, the last person that was ever capable. His eyes keep falling on Kiara as she searches the same heavens, different memories crashing down behind her eyes. He wants her, now more than ever, something broken reaching out of his chest, desperate to hold her. In this grief, in this darkness, he wishes he could touch her, tuck his face into her shoulder and let the sobs rip through him like the hurricane that tossed their little island mere weeks before. 

The sight of her, silver and soft and endless, touches a spark in him, helping it catch, and he recognizes the warmth and caution of hope. That wouldn’t exist, not if John B was really dead. His soul (not that he believes in that stuff, consciously, but maybe if someone asked with the right amount of weed in his system, maybe if that someone was Kie) would be empty, dusty and broken, if his best friend was really gone. 

“He’s not dead,” JJ says, surprised when it falls out of his mouth and into the night air. She turns to look at him, and even the split second of seeing the stars settled in the depths of her eyes is too much. He sits up abruptly. She follows, and her hands move like she wants to hold him as he stares at the ground between his feet, but instead, she takes another hit and hands him back the blunt. He’d forgotten she was holding it. Looking up at her, he sees her eyes are brimming like he knows something, like he’s about to tell her about a clue he’s been left, like John B got out of the storm somehow and back to land. He knows he’s about to gut her when he says it. “I’d know.” 

In an instant, her face falls, and his heart with it. Her answer is said from behind closed doors, her voice empty and humorless. “The first stage of grief is denial,” she says, like he needs reminding, and he thinks it’s supposed to be a joke, but it doesn’t land at all, just falls to the grass like rain, or tears, or expectations. 

“You sound like Pope,” he says, and it’s automatic, the bite back, the banter, the sarcasm. But the name of their friend reminds both of them of earlier that afternoon (and god, was that only this afternoon?), of Kie’s mistake, of the look on JJ’s face and what it did to her chest and the immediate realization that she fucked up. He’s looking at her, hoping he might discern a motive on her face, but she won’t look at him. 

A bitterness he didn’t know he was holding down rises like bile in his throat and he falls back into the hammock before taking another long, burning hit. He knows Kie watches him do it. “I’d know,” he repeats. 

She doesn’t say anything, just lays back next to him, half-curled on her side, arms crossed over her stomach. He can feel her eyes tracing over his profile, feel her mind working like before. It’s not, uncomfortable, exactly, but it’s not the easy silence they usually fall into, not the comforting presence of an old friend, but rather the tense feeling of possibilities gone unsaid. JJ systematically smokes the rest of the blunt, making himself wait at least a song between hits, sometimes more. At some point, he can feel her relax beside him, and her cheek falls to his shoulder, her breath slow and even. 

“Kie?” he whispers. She hums in response, barely, a noise made near-sleep if not in it. He’s too comfortable here, and it feels like a betrayal. Like he shouldn’t feel anywhere near happy with what happened only hours before. The thought starts a spiral of panic in his chest, a chastisement that he cares more about a girl falling asleep on him than the possible death of his best friend, that he could forget, even for a second, the pain writhing inside him, eating him alive. The blunt still has at least two hits left when he flicks it into the darkness and stands, abruptly, suddenly too full of pent-up energy to be sitting still. 

“It’s late,” he says, swallowing more guilt as she blinks awake. She doesn’t look like she knew she’d fallen asleep. 

His eyes flicker between her and the ground as she stands, tucking her hands into the pocket of her sweatshirt. JJ kicks at the tufts of grass. He can’t meet her eyes, because she’ll look at him like she knows him, like she knows how much he loves her, how much he wants to pull her to him and not let go. He’s afraid of what he might see, afraid of knowing for sure what he’s almost certain of. He doesn’t believe she can love him. She doesn’t know she already does. Neither of them see that they are two celestial bodies, locked in mutual orbit, fated and falling, inevitably, together. 

He only looks up when she speaks, but she doesn’t hold his gaze, just watches her feet as she dithers. "I don’t --” she starts, and heaves a frustrated breath. “I don’t want to go home.” The words break his heart. He’s always envied Kiara her family, always wished for parents that gave even a little bit of a shit about him. To think that she’d rather be with him -- it shatters some sort of false dream he’d had of the Carreras. He looks at Kie, and she seems more earthly, not the girl he’s built up, not the serene goddess he’s told himself he loves, but just a girl, broken and grieving just like him, damaged and struggling and barely holding on. He opens his mouth, because maybe he’s finally going to tell her, finally going to say that he  _ sees _ her, the same way he knows she sees him. But she cuts him off, before he can. “I can’t go home.” 

The finality in her words startles him, and they make eye contact, brown desperate and searching, asking, pleading, opening and bleeding, and blue left with a decision, the control in his hands when it almost never is. “Okay,” JJ says. 

He knows she doesn’t need permission, but she accepts it as such anyway, and he’s helpless to follow her, kicking up dust as she goes. She stops before the stairs, hand flexing on the strap of her backpack, eyebrows drawn together under the harsh, artificial light. Fear haunts her features, echoing in a way that tells him she may barely know it’s there. He takes a breath, hates how it shakes, knows from the flinch in her shoulders that she hears it, but she doesn’t say anything, and he takes the first step towards the house. His bravery falters as he reaches for the door handle, because while courage is action in the face of fear, this is dread rising in his chest. JJ doesn’t know if he can stand up again after seeing what Shoupe has done to the Chateau. He’s been knocked down too many times in his life, slammed into the ground over and over again, especially these last few days, and the echoes of his father’s words -- later repeated by Barry -- ring through his mind. 

_ Stay down, boy.  _

Kie lays her hand on his shoulder. He opens the door. 

The living room is a mess, the pullout ripped open, sheets and blankets in a pile. There are papers scattered across the floor, the table on its side, every kitchen cabinet open, their contents tumbling out onto the counters and into the brackish water still lingering in the bottom of the sink. For the second time, that night, he loses everything. His heart, already broken, takes another rib-cracking hit, his breath stuck on the shards of bone hanging in his chest. The dark closes in, the musty smell of the house oppressive for the first time, and he turns to run, because that’s what he does, what he always does, what he knows and what he’s good at. Instead of escape, he finds Kiara. 

He stumbles into her, her arms coming up around him automatically, locking around his shoulders so he has no choice but to bring his around her waist, and he’s choking on words that spill out of him with no intent, only a desperate attempt at an expression of the natural disaster he’s become. “I can’t --” he’s pressing his face into her neck, and he can’t breathe, the air building and threatening to explode within him, “It’s not --” he tries, and that’s no good, either. “They --” 

She interrupts, in that small, terrified voice he remembers from the night in the hot tub, when she’d held him just like this. “I know,” she says, “I know.” 

He pulls away from her, and she’s incandescent, silver and shining and looking like home. That same small pocket of hope starts to expand again, just underneath his lungs, and once more, she’s the cause, glittering and resilient and still here, even after he’s lost the one thing he didn’t know could be taken from him. 

“Kie…” he sighs, but he doesn’t hear it, too lost in the moonlight refracting in her eyes. He can’t lose her, not without her knowing what she means to him, how many times she’s pulled him back from the edge of madness or destruction or defeat. He loves her. He loves her with everything he is and everything he will be, even if that’s not much at all. She has to know, and there are no words for this, no way to tell her and have her understand, not with the way language sticks in his throat and refuses to say what he means. 

So he kisses her. 

Kiara comes alive under his touch. There is no moment of shock, no delayed response, only a bursting into flame. She is hungry and wanting under his mouth, taking what he gives and asking for more. For an instant, the monster in him, the one he’s been suppressing all night, roars in satisfaction, a greedy, lustful noise. On instinct, he pulls her in, one hand at the back of her neck and the other the small of her back, pushing her up against the door, and it isn’t until her hands rise to twist in his hair that he realizes what he’s done, the gentle bite of her fingernails against his scalp bringing him back to himself. He pulls back, missing the way she chases his lips, dread sinking like a stone as disgust for his own actions climbs in his throat. “Fuck,” he gasps, “Fuck, Kie, I’m so sorry --” 

JJ tries to shove himself off of her, sure that she hates him, that he’s ruined the last good thing, that he’s tarnished her shine with his depravity, his feral need that surpassed permission, but he doesn’t get far before she’s reaching for him, curling her fists in his shirt and snapping him back into her. He swallows his surprise as she kisses him again, rough and desperate as she presses herself against the door, drawing him in. He doesn’t want to stop her, but he can’t let himself be a mistake, not when he’s wanted this for so long. 

He puts his hands flat on the door, pushing himself away, resisting the tension in her arms even as every part of him wants to fall back in. “What are we doing?” he asks, and there’s no hesitation as she reaches up again. 

“JJ,” she gasps, and the hitch in her breath, along with the tug of her hands in his hair, makes his cock twitch as she arches her spine to push her mouth closer to his. “Shut up.” 

He can’t help but hold her, his hands framing her ribs before one arm tightens around her waist and the other slides into her hair, the curls that he’s watched dancing in the wind, that have slapped him, wet and stinging across the face, that he’s seen in intricate braids and falling loose around her shoulders and always felt an unendurable desire to touch. He curls his fist in them, and the soft noise she makes reminds him where they are, everything that’s happened to them in this unspeakable darkness. 

He pulls away again, but he doesn’t go far, not with the way she pants against his lips and drags her fingernails over the nape of his neck, and it’s like she’s got a gravity to her, like he can’t help but fall towards her again and again. “Don’t you think --” he tries, but Kiara’s always thinking, got to be freaking out somewhere, because even though her response is a complete surprise, he must still know her, at least a little bit. 

“I don’t want to think,” she interrupts, and there’s the truth of it, vindicating even as it disappoints. She doesn’t want him the way he wants her, doesn’t love him, hasn’t been waiting for him. He’s just a distraction, an easy, convenient way to forget her grief and distress. She kept him from escaping, but is using him as her own. “I want this,” she says, “I  _ need _ this,” and even the part of him that’s grieving the loss of her while she’s still in his arms can’t ignore the break in her voice. Their breath mixes and heaves in the dark, stale room. “I need you.” 

It almost breaks him. It comes so close. But he knows her, knows that she needs structure and forethought and plans, and he knows that if he lets her make this mistake without thinking, she will regret it, regret him, and he doesn’t think he’d live through that. He wants her to decide, to choose, and a selfish part of him wants her to know that in the morning, when she wakes up and looks over and realizes how badly she’s fucked up her life by letting him love her, she’ll be the only one to blame. He’s giving her a chance, wanting her to think this through, to recognize that they’re no good for each other and walk away because he’s too much of a coward, too greedy, too drunk on her skin and the smell of her hair to let her go. 

“Are you sure?” he asks. 

She bites her lip, in that way that belongs to her, and he can practically hear her shouting herself down, hear her begging herself not to think, because if she pauses too long, she’ll realize what they both know, and walk away. “JJ,” she says, high and broken, wasted and wanting. “Please.” 

In this way, Kiara makes her choice, and he surrenders. His mouth falls over hers again, unburdened and unrestrained, and there is no uncertainty in the way he kisses her, his feelings plain in the movement of his lips and the beckoning of his tongue, and he doesn’t know if she’s listening or not, letting herself feel what he’s laying out for her to see, but she kisses back, just as fiercely. They fall, and nothing matters but the way she feels in his arms, a prayer answered, a dream fulfilled. He can’t get enough of her, his hands sliding up her thighs, pushing up her sweatshirt, tangling in her hair, and she’s peach-scented smoke, the salt of her sweat a drug in his mouth. She makes the sweetest noises, and he takes direction, noting all her favorite spots and focusing his attention there. Her shirt comes off, and he can’t take his lips off her neck, and his hands come up to hold her tits and she moans, long and begging. He’s fully hard underneath her now, and she gasps when he flips her onto her back, clawing at the hem of his shirt and ripping it off. 

Falling over her again and feeling the press of bare skin sends a shudder through him akin to the relief of a long-awaited homecoming. She wraps one hand around the arm he’s using to balance his weight, and her fingernails in his bicep leave crescent-moon marks that he hopes will last til dawn. In answer, JJ sucks hickies into her neck, a reminder to both of them that this is happening, that he will not let her remember it as a dream. Her hips are insistent and he answers their request, dipping his fingers underneath her waistband and smiling as her grip tightens. 

“Yeah?” he asks, and it slips out, cocky and satisfied because  _ he’s _ the one making her moan for him, making her sigh into his mouth and push her hips against his hand. She nods hurriedly, and he wastes no time undoing her shorts and dropping his hand lower over her center. The heat and wetness already there makes him drop his head against her shoulder, and he skirts his fingers over her underwear, tracing the lips of her cunt and hovering above her clit because he wants this to last, wants to take his time remembering the way she sounds and the way she feels, wants to learn every last trick and move and secret spot that sends her higher. It’s difficult, not to dive into her the way he wants, and every time her hips twitch they press against his cock, making him desperate to bury himself inside her, to feel her warm and tight and perfect around him. 

“Would you just --” she starts, and then breaks off on a moan as he finally pushes down on her clit in slow methodical circles, “Fucking, ah --” she hisses in a sharp inhale and he smiles, proud of the way she wants him. “Fuck me already!” Kie never has never had the patience for him, not in the years of their friendship and not now, pressed chest-to-chest with his hand on her cunt. 

JJ’s smile grows as he ghosts his teeth over her ear, finally pushing down her underwear. “What?” he asks, because, despite it all, he’s having  _ fun _ , “aren’t you enjoying this?” It’s half a joke and half something he wants to know, wants to make sure that she hasn’t changed her mind. He gets his answer as his fingers dip into her folds and finds her soaking wet. “Fuck, Kie,” he sighs, and pushing his hips into her is unconscious, a reaction from the heat of her, perfect and hot. Dropping his head against the forearm holding him up, he can’t help but imagine his cock inside her, what she’ll feel like as he fucks her. “God, you’re so fucking wet.” 

“Your fault,” she chokes out in response, because he’s dragging his fingers up her center, tracing her entrance and circling her clit. She’s panting against him, gripping at the back of his neck, and finally, he dips his middle finger into her, moaning at the feeling of her walls clenching around him. He works one finger against her g-spot, and then, when her moans start to quiet, two, and when she asks, another. The noises she’s making might qualify in the top ten hottest things he’s ever heard in his life, and it’s a conscious effort not to rut against her hip. 

JJ wants to taste her, to put his head between her legs and take her in his mouth like some sort of holy communion, wants to know how her clit feels between his teeth, how she likes it, fast and relentless or slow and torturing. He’s thought about it before, maybe too many times, usually when he hoists her on his shoulders as they roughhouse in the ocean, John B lifting up Pope to see who can knock the other into the water first. There’s not really anywhere else for his mind to go, not with her bare thighs, warm and wet, bracketing his head as he holds up her weight. He’s waited for this for so long, and he’s not about to lose his chance. 

Kiara is in her own world as he kisses down her body, pausing to each nipple into his mouth, swirling his tongue around them and scraping his teeth over her tits. Her back arches and he tucks a smug snicker into her sternum, basking in the warmth of her skin on his face. Finally, he reaches her waist, drags his hands down her sides and curls them in her waistband. “Can I?” he asks, and she has to spiral down to earth before she can answer him. 

Her pupils are blown wide, impossibly dark and gorgeous, like he’s looking at the goddess of the night, herself. Chest heaving, she focuses on his face, and he melts, heat thrumming in his veins even while his heart opens and spills without his permission. He’s caught, at a loss, and the world slows and stops as she holds his gaze. In this moment, he can imagine that this holds the same weight for her as it does for him, that this is the beginning of something bright and burning and historic. Unconsciously, he licks his lips, and time crashes forward when she realizes what he’s asking. 

“Fuck,” she whines, “yes, please,” and he’s never taken a girl’s pants off faster in his  _ life _ . He wastes no time on teasing, impatience radiating off of her and boiling over in him, just sweeps his tongue up her slit, burying himself between her legs. The noise she makes is almost holy in its reverberation. JJ holds her thighs over his shoulders, wrapping his arms around each like a vise, moving his head with her as her hips buck and her fingers twist in his hair. He can’t help but moan against her as she shakes beneath him and he loses himself in the taste of her, following her incoherent direction until he can’t tell how much time has passed. 

Suddenly, she’s jerking him upwards, kissing the taste of herself out of his mouth, and he’s helpless in her hands, bound to her. “Inside me,” she gasps, her voice scraped raw and begging. “Now.” 

And  _ fuck _ that’s  _ definitely _ the hottest thing he’s ever heard. “But you haven’t --” he returns, but Kiara doesn’t seem to care, shoving her hand down his shorts. The feeling of her hand around his cock stops him in his tracks. He wants to surrender completely, to fall into her touch and drown in it. 

“Now,” she says again, and before he can respond, she’s leaning up to kiss him gently, drawing him in, pulling him down, and he drops to his forearms, bracing his weight on either side of her head, his hair falling against her forehead as they move together. It’s a distraction, and a good one, because he doesn’t notice her hands at his fly until his shorts are halfway down his thighs. Her hands find his cock, stroking gently as her kiss captures his attention and he’s gasping into her mouth, intoxicated with the feeling of skin against skin.  _ God, _ he thinks,  _ I love -- _

“Unless,” she says, interrupting that dangerous thought, kissing him again and again, “You’ve changed your mind?” And no, he hasn’t, and he’s hoping she hasn’t either, desperately crawling out of his clothes before she has the chance. She’s smiling as he hovers over her again, looks like she wants to laugh, but then she catches his eyes and her face hovers in an uncertainty he struggles to define, something that disappoints him and brings him hope all together. Brushing her hair out of her face, his stomach turns as he remembers something mildly important. 

“I don’t have a condom,” JJ says, and there’s a tremble in his voice he doesn’t like. 

“I’m clean,” she answers, and reaches up into his hair as an afterthought. He’s getting used to feeling her hands there. “You?” she asks. 

He’s always careful, always uses protection. He didn’t used to care about testing or any of that shit, until Kie pointed out one day that if he kept going like that his dick would fall off, and that the clinic did it for free if you were under 25, so he invested some time. He nods. “What about --” he asks, because he can’t afford Plan B. 

“I have an IUD,” she says, and he’s heard of that, heard her rant about affordable birth control and women’s healthcare and a lot of other things that she always thought he wasn’t listening to. But he does listen, more than she knows. 

He wants to kiss her, lets his eyes drop to her lips and licks his own. “Last chance,” he says, because he’s not totally sure this can happen to him, not really, certain she’s going to realize what she’s doing and push him off, stalk out of the house and refuse to ever speak to him again. “Still sure?” 

Kiara nods. 

JJ kisses her, allowing himself this moment to pour everything he’s feeling into the way his lips fall against hers, holding her face and brushing his thumb over her jaw. She can’t take it, surging up against him, licking into his mouth. He tries to slow her down, to savor the moment, to live in the heat and press of her skin, but she wraps her hand around his cock, pulls him closer, and he falls, like a meteor burning up as it enters the atmosphere. She pulls him inside her, slowly, gently, like a sacrament, a holy ritual. It takes effort not to push to the hilt as he feels wet heat surround his cock, delicious and thrilling. 

His forehead drops to her shoulder and he takes a moment, just one, to tell himself that this is  _ real _ , that it’s happening to him, with her, that it’s Kiara’s hands curling over the nape of his neck, Kiara’s legs bracketing his hips, Kiara’s cunt he’s buried in. She’s perfect and soft underneath him, and it feels impossible, like entering heaven. 

“JJ,” she says, and he shatters at the sound of his name from her mouth. “Move.” He does, even and steady as he can, and she feels  _ so good _ , gasping and clutching at him, and he can’t help the filth that’s falling out of his mouth, partially habit and a little bit preventative -- if he keeps talking dirty, he won’t tell her what he really wants to say.  _ I love you. _

“God, Kie,” he’s muttering, “You’re so fucking hot, feel so fucking good, you’re so fucking wet for me.” He doesn’t even think, just lets his mouth run, a river of words to drown the real, terrifying sentiment he’s holding in his chest. Her hips rise and fall, meeting him like the tide, locked in an eternal dance with the shore. “Just like that, baby,” he says. “God, fuck,  _ yes,  _ just like that.” 

She doesn’t seem to hear him, doesn’t seem to care. He hopes it’s his prowess, not that she’s actively tuning him out. The rhythm they find is incredible, her hips moving just as well as he’s always imagined they would, years of watching her dance and dip and grind proved right in this moment.  _ Their  _ moment. He’s thought about this, because of course he has, taken himself in hand and bit back her name even as her body moved over him in his mind. It’s so much better than any fantasy he’s ever concocted. He couldn’t imagine this. 

Feeling his climax building, he shifts his weight to one arm, using the other hand to hook her knee over his hip, and she cries out as he hits her g-spot with every thrust, the sounds she’s making threatening to send him over the edge. “C’mon, Kie,” he says, his voice so tense it’s practically a growl. “Cum for me.” 

And oh, how she does, with a sound that he’ll remember for the rest of his life, her nails digging into his back and dragging from shoulders to waist in a way that tells him there will be marks in the morning. The walls of her cunt flex and flutter around him, and he loses almost all control, fucking her fast and deep, ascending at light speed until the wave finally crashes over him, and he spills inside her with an almost-disappointed breath. It’s over. 

The night is hot, almost unbearably so, and he rolls off of her, collapsing into the messy bed. Smiling is an unconscious act, an expression he barely realizes is there. His eyes, starry and elated, trace over her lithe, relaxed from, sliding over the graceful dips and curves of her body, her skin glowing in the moonlight. The breeze is gentle as it blows through the house, cooling the sweat that beads at his temple and runs down the valley of her breasts.  _ I love you _ , his heart screams,  _ I love you, I love you, I love you. _

Kiara sits up, and his hand reaches out without his permission, lifting a ringlet off her spine, twisting it around his finger. The muscles in her back twitch, barely, and a deep, disappointed shock shoots through him. Where before was the contented silence of the afterglow is now a tense and horrible stillness, and JJ feels like he can’t breathe. She’s thinking now, the way he knew she would, terrified of what she’s let herself do. He’s terrified of the quiet that sits between them. It’s like a tangible thing, expanding, shoving them apart. 

“I’m gonna pee,” she says, and stands, leaving him alone in the bed. He watches her go, tugging her underwear up and then pulling his shirt over her head. It settles on her hips and the line of her body underneath the worn fabric draws something up in his chest, etching on the inside of his ribs, like she’s signed her name under his broken heart. 

When she disappears into the hall he heaves himself up, clenching his fists in his hair and biting back the hot, embarrassed tears that force their way into his throat. He feels so phenomenally  _ stupid _ , letting this happen. How are they ever going to get past this? He’s in love with her, fully, irreversibly, and there’s no doubting that, after tonight. He’s shown his hand, completely, damn near almost said the words, and to her, he’s nothing but a distraction from her grief. Backhanding the tears off his face, he pulls on his underwear and stalks out to the porch, where he’d left his duffel. He digs out a pair of basketball shorts and pulls them on, foregoing a shirt in the warm, humid night. 

Leaning against the supports of the porch, he stares out across the starlit marsh, the moon reflecting off the water, the HMS Pogue bobbing by the dock. It could be any other summer night, one they would fill with smoke and sparks and laughter, living, blithely immortal and unaware. Except John B is gone, he’s ruined his chance with Kiara, and he’s on the run from the fury of his own father. Things have never been darker, more hopeless. His head aches and he grinds the heels of his palms into his eyes, frustrated that they’re still leaking, that he can’t stop fucking  _ crying. _ It’s the grief of losing his best friend, of taking his chance and failing, and his head is so filled and buzzing that he can’t pick out any particular thought. He heaves a shaking sigh. He doesn’t know what to  _ do _ . The only person he wants to talk to is Kiara. Even when it’s about her. 

The sound of a raw, unadulterated sob cuts through the tranquility of the dark, and without a thought, he’s moving, running through the house to get to her. The bathroom door doesn’t lock and he pushes it open to see her doubled over the sink, hands braced on either side, chest heaving, true grief and pain spilling out of her mouth and shattering against the cheap tile and dusty porcelain. Taking her into his arms is an automatic motion, done without thought or worry or consideration for what it might mean. The only thing he cares about is comforting her, walking her through this sadness and terror, reminding her she’s not alone. 

Gently, JJ pulls her back by her shoulders, and she turns and falls into him without question, tucking her face against his neck. Her tears fall, hot and heartbreaking, on his bare skin, rolling down his chest as she sobs. “He’s gone,” she says, and her voice is shattered, broken and scraped to the bone. The sound is like a knife between his ribs, a feeling he knows well. “He’s really gone.” 

_ He’s not, _ he wants to say.  _ I know, I can feel it. He’s not, I promise you _ . But she won’t believe him. Without letting her go, he navigates them back to the pullout, straightening the bedding as best he can with one arm still around her. He lays her down, pulls the blanket over her, and climbs in himself, laying an arm under her neck and pulling her into his chest. Pressing his lips to her forehead, he screws his eyes shut as she bucks and cries and keens. The tears from his own eyes don’t stop, still haven’t stopped, and he whispers against her hairline, reassurances he knows she doesn’t hear. 

“He’s coming back,” he says. “He’s coming back to us.” 

It’s dawn when she finally stops crying, the lightening sky a betrayal of the comfort they’ve carved out of the dark. She breathes him in, forehead against his collarbones, and he trails his fingers up and down her spine, calluses catching on her smooth skin, imperfections tripping over transcendent beauty. Kiara is a moonbeam made human, soft and kind, ethereal, strong where others expect her not to be. He knows he’s holding a force of nature in his arms, an unconscious part of him grateful for the privilege. He doesn’t know how long this will last, how long she’ll lie to herself, pretend this is something that they do. 

“I can’t stay here,” she says, shoving herself back from him. Apparently, not long. “I should go home.” He reaches up, takes her chin in rough hands, a soft gesture for things so accustomed to violence. 

“Kie,” he says, the name slipping from his lips unbidden. Her face is a mask of barely-restrained pain. She wears everything there, is honestly shit at covering up her feelings. He reads her easily, always has. He doesn’t know why. He moves forward to kiss her, lacking the words at this moment to express himself correctly. Suddenly, her palms flatten against his chest, holding him back, and, yet again, he feels as if the floor has fallen out from under him. 

“JJ,” she sighs, “We -- I mean, I --” 

_ No _ , he thinks.  _ God, not yet, please _ . He’s not surprised. He knew this moment was coming, when she would finally put the wall back up between them, reinforce the separation and take herself away. Maybe, he didn’t believe it would really happen. Maybe he wanted to try and live in the delusion that she loved him the same way he loved her, even when he knew that he didn’t deserve it, never would. “Shit,” he says, half a disappointed, expectant chuckle. "Okay.” 

He closes his eyes, shoves down the angry scream climbing up his throat, does his best to wrap chains around the bitter beast clawing at the inside of his belly. Hasn’t he suffered enough? Hasn’t he lost too many chances, been left behind too many times? The part of him that still retains some semblance of pride hates her in this moment, spiteful and blaming and  _ wrong.  _ He swallows it, shoves it down, does all he can to hide the part of him he hates the most from her. He wants to shut down, pretend he’s not here. Stop talking, stop moving, stop  _ feeling _ everything so goddamn much. But then, her breath ghosts across his face, and he opens his eyes, and she’s looking at him with those eyes, soft and perfect and kind. 

“It’s just --” he says, the words forcing themselves up, fighting their way through barbed, empty insults, slammed doors and split knuckles. He licks his lips, fights to keep his eyes on hers. He doesn’t want to ask her for this, knows she doesn’t want to give it, feels a burden even by asking. “Can we go back to normal tomorrow?” If she leaves him now, he will lose himself to that monster, become that creature he’s spent so long resisting. She takes a breath, and she’s about to say no, and he won’t survive if he hears it. “Please,” he says, interrupting her. And then, for once, tells the truth. “I don’t want to be alone.” 

“Yeah,” she says, and her reply is so automatic, that stupid, foolish hope flares up behind his lungs, desperate to believe that she doesn’t want to leave him. “Yeah, okay.” 

He kisses her then, soft and chaste, kind and slow, quiet in the gray, weeping dawn. She kisses back, but it’s not a trade, not a push and pull but an allowance, like she leaves herself there and lets herself be kissed. It hurts, even as it comforts, but he won’t complain because if this is what she will give him, he’ll take it. He wants to be wanted, wants to be loved, but he knows that’s an impossibility. He’ll be tolerated, for the rest of his life, even by Kiara. No one will rip their heart out for him the way he does for the people he loves. He’s just not worth it.

He ducks his forehead against hers, tucks his hand against the side of her neck, his thumb brushing her earlobe, his pinky the juncture of her neck and shoulder. He’s too big, compared to her, too clumsy and brutal against her delicate frame. “It’s gonna be alright,” he says. A lie. To himself or to her, he doesn’t know. 

She falls asleep long before he does, and as the world brightens, he traces his eyes over her face until he can’t keep them open anymore, memorizing her, cataloging every detail of how she feels in his arms, preserving the image for his worst days, for the moments he knows will come when she isn’t there to lay her hands against his skin and remind him he deserves to be alive. He waits until her breathing is completely even, has been for a long time. 

“I love you,” he whispers. 

The morning is unforgiving, unyielding in its heat and light. When he wakes, it’s to Kiara’s knuckles tracing down his back, the quiet sting reminding him of the scratches she left there. He watches her, still, waiting, every part of him alert to the way her eyes trace over him, the tension in her movements. He knows how to read anger, malice, a thousand other things that end with him getting hurt. He knows the way this will end, just looking for clues in her expression as to how. 

“Hey,” she mutters. 

“Hey,” he says. She doesn’t move, so neither does he. He wants her to say something about the previous night, to crack a joke or reject him again, just so he knows where they stand, how he should act moving forward. But she doesn’t, just tucks her bottom lip between her teeth, and if he was any good at art, that’s how he would draw her, capture that expression that’s so unique to her kind, beautiful face, pensive and thoughtful and holding his heart in her hands. 

“I should get home,” she says, but her hand doesn’t stop moving over his skin, and she might be waiting for him, might want him to do something, but what, he doesn’t know. 

JJ doesn’t say anything. She stands up. 

Watching Kie gather her clothes, he has to clench his fists to keep from reaching for her, his eyes traveling over her endless, toned legs, remembering the way they felt around his hips, the way they flexed and shook with his mouth on her cunt. Finally, she goes to stuff her sweatshirt into her bag, and he remembers she’s wearing his shirt. He stands as she balls it up against her thigh, and reaches out his hand. 

“Kie,” he says, and she starts, looking at him, something deep and desperate in her eyes. His mind runs through all the things he could say, all the things he wants to ask, all the words gone so tragically unsaid. His heart pounds so fiercely in his chest he’s afraid that she can hear it. What would she do, if he told her what he whispered in her sleep, if those words saw the light of day? He wants to believe it would be a good thing. He’s smart enough to know better. He looks at her face, waiting, expectant. At this moment, he gives up. “My shirt?” he asks. 

She pulls it off like it’s a dare, peeling it slowly off her back, and he can’t help the gaze that travels up her chest. The memory of the taste of her skin shudders through him, the sounds she made with his mouth on her tits, and he packs it away, shuts the door between fantasy and reality, tells himself to remember quietly, remember it as one remembers a dream. She throws it at him, and it’s warm and smells like her as it hits his chest. He puts it on, a challenge in his eyes, because that same frustration is rising in him. If she wants something, she can ask for it. She’s the one who stopped him, who drew the line. And after years, he knows not to fuck with Kie’s boundaries, knows not to break her rules. 

The day beats down through the windows, golden and unflinching across the living room. She slings her backpack over her shoulder. _I love you_ , he thinks, screaming it behind his eyes, biting the inside of his cheek. _I love you. God, I love you._ Birds sing in the tense silence. He tilts his chin back, like he always does just before a fight. 

_ Please, please stay. _

She turns to go.

**Author's Note:**

> hi I'm sorry  
> lowkey really kind of proud of this although I will admit, I got perhaps a little *too* sad  
> [tumblr](https://homebody-nobody.tumblr.com/)  
> Thanks to [katie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaatiekinss/pseuds/kaatiekinss) for beta'ing and ofc the [jiara gc](https://hvitstark.tumblr.com/gcshenanigans) for all their ideas, help, and support  
> don't forget to tip ur fic writers  
> (the tips are comments)


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